If you won't be using it all the time, you might want to look at using a cellular router. There are lots of areas out in the sticks that have 3G available, but you might have to put up an external antenna. Ask around to see what carrier the locals use and you'll have a better idea of what provider works. You also might be able to add it to a shared data plan. It's not as good as a cablemodem or DSL, but it should work better than satellite.

That's a very interesting idea. I do have a family data plan for our cell phones, so this seems viable. Do you, or anybody else for that matter, have any experience using 3g for HF remote (say using a K3 for example). Thanks, Fred aa6cj.

I have operated mobile using a cellular (Sprint) connection into my remote setup. Worked fine. Also have used Sprint cellular several times while doing demo's at various radio clubs. My latency on internet is about 75 to 80 msec. Not sure on Sprint, but connect speed is somewhat less. No problems, however. In my opinion use of a satellite internet would be impossible due to extremely long latency (up to satellite and back, plus some more along the way). (might work a little, but you will pull out all your hair, and then throw away the whole shebang!).

The true answer to high speed, no delay satellite delivered Internet is the new Excede from Via Sat. All other satellite delivery service have much too much delay and low speed. I am 5 miles in the Ozark hills and use the Exede for live HD streaming video broadcasts of HAM Nation. Bob Heil, K9EID

Thanks Bob for the reply. It's taken me 3 years to get the property and at last I'm almost there. I have 21 acres to play with that's unrestricted in northern Alambama. Next month I will get the trailer delivered, but alas no cable anywhere near. The family is going to want TV and Internet, so here's hoping excede will be low enough latency!73,Fred Ps Ive enjoyed quite s few Ham nations over the last few years. Thanks!

I can't speak to HF remote control, but I can offer this-For a recent ARES deployment, we provided Internet access to a triathlon, using a yagi 700/1.2 Ghz cellular yagi and a CradlePoint 3/4G cellular router, which was cross connected to a Ubiquity NanoBridge M2 access point.

The location had zero cellular connectivity in 90% of the valley/lake edge, and only in the middle of the lake's dam was it possible for a regular cell phone to get even marginally one bar of signal. The nearest cell tower was 17 miles away down the lake, beyond the end of the valley. Ping times for the phones that would even work were in excess of 1600ms

But with the 18dbi cellular antenna and the far better receiver in the CradlePoint, we were able to get 5 full bars of connectivity, and 5-10ms ping times.We then took that Internet access and used it for our command setup (echolink, FLdigi, weather operations, VoIP phone access, 911 access) as well as providing 802.11 a/g WiFi to a 3 mile wide area of the triathlon for race promoters to use for timing clocks, medevac, and SAG operators.The 4G signal as provided by the Cradlepoint was more than sufficient for two laptops running live weather radar streams, two VoIP phones, and 8 different mobile timing points, SAG bikes, etc.

I would think that a CradlePoint with a good external antenna would be able to get a high quality low latency connection to an area where either the operator or the HF rig was, to allow for quality rig control. Does require cellular access, but even in an area where cell phones crappy internal antennas are failing, such a router and antenna can vastly improve the available connectivity.

VoIP should not "eat massive amounts of data" unless it's very badly configured, as in "Skype" or something like that.

A properly configured VoIP phone call uses G.729, which is 8k per second, an absolutely tiny stream of data, far less even than a webpage load from something like CNN or Yahoo with all the eye candy and ads on the page.

Even G.711 is only 64k.

You can run a single VoIP over dialup connections - I've done it before.

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